Tiger Cats - Greg Marshall Fired

You must have heard by now that the head coach for the Hamilton Tiger Cats has been fired. Greg Marshall, former head coach for the McMaster Marauders, headed 3 seasons with the Tiger Cats from 2004 to the 4th game of 2006. He won the CFL coach of the year award in his first season as a head coach in the CFL. If I remember correctly, he beat out Pinball Clemons for this honour. (Does anybody really know his first name?) Even though I am a huge Tiger Cat fan, I thought that Pinball Clemons deserved this title since he was an outstanding player, turned coach and brought his team into the Grey Cup to win the 2004 title. Either way, firing coaches in mid-season is totally a PR move. Since it is very easy to fire a coach when a team is doing badly, that is what usually happens first. As a player, losing a respectable coach in mid-season is hard since new relationships will have to be made with new coaches. Fortunately for Hamilton, Ron Lancaster has a history with the Cats. Lancaster has done great things for Hamilton, as well as bad things. He had a great playing career, arguably dubbed the 'greatest CFL player of all time'. He brought a team that was 2-16 in 1997 to Grey Cup contenders the following year. However, his loyalty to Danny McManus, served to be his vulnerability in 2003, starting him in 15 games, despite being one of his worst seasons of his career.

Regardless, the 2006 Tiger Cats have a lot of talent. Hopefully, Ron Lancaster can turn the team around and start winning games. In my opinion they should start with playing smarter and stop giving the ball over on stupid penalties. I hope Bob Young knows what he is doing.